HK will carefully examine today’s decision by the Stuttgart District Court

Relating to today’s verdict by the Stuttgart District Court:

We will examine today’s verdict carefully. We can however not understand the Court’s decision that we should not only forfeit the profit generated on the Mexico business but instead forfeit the entire sales price, despite the fact that none of the directors committed an offence. This should have been taken into account. In addition, the Court could have taken account in its verdict of the fact that from the beginning, Heckler & Koch has supported the proceedings and the active investigation and fully cooperated with the public prosecutor. This included the company initiating a comprehensive special investigation and providing the prosecutor with the detailed, over 100 pages long, report of this.

Relating to the fundamental changes that the company has successfully implemented over the past few years:

Over the past few years, we have undertaken a rigorous change process. Today, Heckler & Koch is set up completely differently compared to the middle of the last century. Heckler & Koch expressly accepts its social and legal responsibility. Therefore, the company has made far-reaching and substantial changes because of the regrettable incidents, in order to prevent such occurrences in the future.
The sales strategy has been fundamentally changed and new ethical standards established. Since then, our products are only delivered to countries that meet clear and comprehensible requirements. This includes countries that belong to the EU or NATO, or have partnership agreements with NATO, together with other European and non-European countries that fulfil accordingly strict criteria and for which deliveries are expressly in the security interest of the Federal Republic of Germany.
In addition, as a consequence of “Mexico” Heckler & Koch has made changes to its internal Compliance Management System to increase the sense of responsibility of the company and its employees and also to subject each potential distribution partner to a rigorous compliance audit. A newly defined code of conduct, anticorruption and cartel law guidelines and the ethical business principles also influence the required company orientation. These measures characterise the current company culture and are applied consistently.